a sort of animated
encyclopedia, to be consulted at will. And all this, to be able to
instruct a half-civilized brood of children, of both sexes, in the
rudiments of reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic and geography, with
enough of grammar to enable them to stammer and stumble through a simple
sentence, and arrive safely at the end without any material injury to
the teacher's nerves.

However, it was, at least, an honorable independence, poorly remunerated
though it was, and she went to work with a will.

Her first boarding place was at the house of an aged couple, by the name
of Wynn, who lived a short distance from the school house. Their
appearance struck her as extremely peculiar. Mrs. Wynn's tall, stooping
figure, spoke plainly of a hard, laborious life. Her sharp features and
keen, piercing eyes, made more prominent by the unusual lowness of the
forehead, told more surely than language, of their owner's propensity to
investigate the affairs of her neighbor, and proved her claim to the
complimentary title, they had bestowed upon her, viz:--"That prying old
mother, Wynn." But what was still more strange, was the silver hair of
both these old people, and which their age did not seem to warrant. The
lady, however, with a little lingering of feminine vanity in her heart,
had made an awkward attempt at hair dye of home manufacture, and from a
too plentiful use of sulphur and copperas, had succeeded in producing a
band of vivid yellow upon each side of her temple, while the hair at the
back and upon the crown of her head, was white as snow. Clemence learned
afterwards that these worthy people had seen a great deal of trouble,
and that their prematurely aged appearance was from that source alone.

She was not aware that they had more than one daughter, who was her
pupil, but as she went into the "spare room" assigned her, and
carelessly took up a "carte de visite" that lay upon the table, she saw
underneath the picture of a buxom damsel, in a feeble, trembling hand,
"My own sweet Rose."

She had before this noticed another queer trait of the people among whom
her lot was so strangely cast, and that was their singular penchant for
fancy and high-sounding names. Among her scholars there were, for the
girls, respectively--Alcestine Alameda, Boadicea Beatrice, Claudia
Clarinda, Eugenia Eurydice, Venetia Ignatia, and so on, indefinitely;
and among a group of ragged, bare-footed boys, a number of time-honored
Bible name